It sucks when Jews commit a hillul hashem and the news picks up on it. We all suffer, especially if they’re observant and it smacks of hypocrisy.
But what about when it’s a poseur?
Amidst the feel-goods about IsraAID and JDC helping out on the ground in Haiti comes a story of a shady character named Jorge Puello. He’s a “legal advisor” to the 10 missionaries accused (and now cleared) of smuggling children into Dominican Republic. He’s also wanted in connection with a human trafficking scandal that spans Central America. He reportedly ran a brothel out of his home in Miami, luring Caribbean women with promises of modeling work only to traffic them into the sex-trades. It gets stranger. Puello apparently served a stint in jail for narcotics, served in US Army Intel, and worked for Homeland Security. Is nobody doing background checks anymore?
Oh yeah, and there’s this: he sports a beard, velvet kippah an claims to be ”president of the Jewish Communities of Dominican Republic.”
About four years ago, he emerged in Santo Domingo saying he wanted to establish a Sephardic Jewish community. Cerminara and Ana Puello said everyone in their family is Catholic and that Jorge Puello’s converted on his own. “He is Jewish by conviction,” she said. “He practices the religion and believes it in his heart.”
The Dominican Republic is home to about 50 Jewish families, a tightly knit and low-key community that includes Sephardim and Ashkenazim, and some had doubts about the new arrival, said Isaac Lalo, secretary of the Centro Israelita de Republica Dominicana, the main synagogue.
“This guy has nothing to do with our community,” Lalo said. “Sephardic Jews don’t just set up a community out of the blue.”
WTF?! Like we don’t have enough Madoffs in our midst, people gotta pose as us and do their evil deeds?
Hat tip to failed messiah.